The Midnight Man
by Meizza9
Summary: After the Shrike, Will wanders. To escape the nightmares, insomnia becomes his catharsis, but he had forgotten that he was not alone in stalking the night. He soon finds himself bonding with workers in a profession nearly as haunting as his own. Rating subject to change.
1. Insomnia

_Awake, it's late_

_Or it's early, I should say_

_How do I sleep?_

_My weary mind won't rest..._

_**-**__S_iah,_**Insomnia**_

Dear reader,

Hello to all of you who may have decided to read my story. Before you begin, there are a few things to bear in mind. First, this story does contain the dreaded OC pairing...

Still here? Then I must also note that while the story contains an OC pairing, as well as non-romantic plotpoints with other OCs, the pairing isn't going to happen quickly or be without obstacle. Given the personalities of characters within the Hannibal universe, it's unreasonable to even imagine that certain people would fall for someone within a week. That doesn't even bear in mind the canonical love interest present in the show, which I never really see addressed in OC fics (or addressed in a way that makes her out to be a monstrous bitch).

Thus did I strive to create a character who could interact with canon characters and events in a plausible way without totally disregarding pre-established laws of the show's universe. Please note as well that this story will have fairly irregular updates, as I tend to either write in quick bursts or suddenly become really lazy. I want each chapter to be of a good quality, so sometimes there may be delayed updates. Thank you for taking the time to read these notes if you have. May my writings bring you enjoyment!

**Chapter One: Insomnia **

He couldn't remember what it felt like to sleep through an entire night.

The last time he'd been able to...it must have been some time before Minnesota, before the blood gushing out of Abigail Hobbs' neck and the girls impaled on antlers. Before firing ten shots and killing Garret Jacob Hobbs. Before returning to the field.

Really, if he was going by that logic, it was all Jack's fault that, in the three weeks since killing the Minnesota Shrike, Will hadn't gone a day without seeing the dead man's face in some form. It was to the point where he saw him in his dreams, and even simply when he closed his eyes for any period of time, which was why he'd been avoiding sleep.

In order to keep himself awake, he walked. Sometimes he walked alone, sometimes in the company of his dogs. The woods around his home stretched for miles, the nearest neighbor worlds away from him. His wanderings sometimes lasted for hours, until he and the dogs were so exhausted that by the time they reached home, sleep was immediate and mercifully dreamless.

Other nights, the walking wasn't quite enough.

The paths, walked so frequently that he knew almost every inch, save the uncharted miles beyond his capacity to walk, revealed shapes that resembled the dead man's face. Branches often looked too much like antlers, and animals in some far-off roost would scream like the dying. On nights such as those, Will left the dogs at home, got in his car, and drove aimlessly. So late at night, so deeply entrenched in darkness, the roads carried few passengers. Sometimes Will would find himself crossing into cities he'd never visited, or that he had only seen in passing. He didn't mind much, so long as the new locations gave him something to see, something to keep his mind from returning to the bloodied scene in that kitchen in Minnesota.

But while these excursions kept him away from sleep, they failed in keeping his work from him completely. Night time is the time for prowling, and often he witnessed quite a bit of it. Junkies in shadier streets, wandering homeless, and the occasional ill-intended nightthief all joined Will in his nocturnal journeys.

There was an unearthly quality to the total darkness of suburban areas after dark, a quality which sometimes made Will feel as if he really was at home, trapped in unwanted dreams where dark, feathered stags would hound his steps. The pitch-black streets were the breeding grounds of after hours criminals, and a wellspring for paranoid thought. Such darkness was unnatural for such a densely populated area, and it gave one a detached sensation, the feeling that he or she was the only living being for miles.

Will knew the feeling well, living in such a secluded spot himself, but to have that feeling in a place where noise and light were the norm, some of his latent instincts from his days as a homicide detective rose to the surface. Instincts that, for all intents and purposes, had been slumbering until his recent incident. Such instincts were practically screaming as his vehicle rounded the corner of Maverick Avenue and Newman Road in a small neighborhood in Richmond, for though the darkness was unnerving, dark was exactly as the street should be at this hour of night. According to the digital readout on the dashboard, it was just a little past one in the morning. Yet before him, framed by a few towering masses which looked more like monstrous figures than trees, a lone house stood lit up like a beacon.

Every single window had been illuminated, burning fluorescent light showing a single van parked in front of the residence. Obviously, there was an intruder present, but why would they be so careless in broadcasting themselves to the world? Perhaps not an intruder then, he reasoned. The residents could merely be awake and looking for something in their home, not necessarily being besieged by violent interlopers.

Even so, _every_ light? Who in their right mind would flip every switch in their home, unless he or she was so terrified by something lurking in the halls that they had no choice?

But as the car slowed down due to his curiosity, a much simpler and less sinister answer made itself known. The headlights danced across lettering on the side of the van, tracing out the words "Aftermath, Inc.," and all became clear. The house had been lit intentionally, to let the street know that while the house's current occupants were not the owners, they weren't really intruders, either. They were present to get rid of the evidence of some horrific, messy encounter which had occurred there. Crime scene cleaners, they were, silent laborers of restoration. Will had seen many of their like before, both at his recent return to duty incident and at many other scenes when he was just a detective. He'd never spoken to any of them. In fact, _no one_ really ever spoke to them. But they were the ones tasked with ridding scenes of intense violence of their taint. Houses didn't magically clean themselves, after all.

Will slowed to a stop in front of the house and killed the engine. Though he had begun his drive in order to avoid thinking about such horrors, he found himself wondering at what could have happened there. And so the man posed a new question to himself; did he want to enter the abode and distract his mind by piecing its puzzle together? Truthfully, yes, he did. Though piecing together such events had led him to his insomnia in the first place, this was different. This carried no risk. He didn't have to track down the killer and shoot him dead. He didn't really have to become involved at all. It could simply be an exercise. Depending on the skill of the cleaners, and the span of time they'd already been working, Will's abilities could be put to the test.

Even though he was entering under false pretenses, there was no risk at all. And with no body at the scene, there would be no faces to join his nightmares.

Will walked the path to the beacon-house and knocked hard on the door three times.

* * *

The working hours of a crime-scene cleaner were nothing short of brutal.

When she'd joined the company, Eleanor Rook had been fully aware of and accustomed to the kind of schedule she'd be keeping. What she hadn't been aware of, and hadn't given much thought in months, was how much she'd come to miss sunlight.

Being on call all hours of the day meant that often, like on this night, Eleanor worked at ungodly hours. Given her line of work, and the content of some of the more extreme job sites, one would think that the turnover rate was pretty high for employees. However, if given a chance to explain, Eleanor had several reasons why she was not among that number.

While the late night hours (or were they early morning hours?) carried interesting labels—The Witching Hour, The Hour of the Wolf, The Devil's Hour—most nights passed in relative quiet. It _was_ true that her work was anything but pleasant. Crime scene cleanup was dirty, hazardous, and completely devoid of glamor. You definitely weren't likely to read an article about the restoration of a site after a brutal murder, because no one ever talked about that aspect. No one ever talked to the cleaners themselves, for that matter, unless they were giving out specific instructions. Their existence went fairly unnoticed altogether.

The hours spend power-washing blood away, slashing out ruined carpets, or scraping away scattered organ and brain matter were given no thought. The painstaking process of removed hazardous parts and scouring bathrooms of jellied remains? Easily forgotten.

The hours were long, the schedule did not allow for much of a social life, and the stench of blood sometimes lingered in Eleanor's nostrils for weeks. She never felt quite clean enough, despite the scalding showers she took nightly and the protective gear everyone was required to wear. And always, she felt that she carried some of each crime scene's taint with her, whether that taint was biological or psychological. The work was ever part of her.

Even so, despite the revolting materials she encountered daily, none of it was immediately horrifying to her, and no scene had ever contained a still-hidden murderer waiting to ambush the cleaners. It was a dirty and thankless job, but someone had to do it, and despite its filth Eleanor could never call her job boring.

On particularly quiet nights, she had a habit of trying to figure out each crime scene's story. How had each splatter gotten on the wall? Why? What drove the pretty redhead to take so many pills? What secrets did the walls hide?

A cleaner wasn't privy to the details of a crime, and if she saw the victims at all, it was only through photographs or a brief glimpse of the body as authorities removed it. This left her to draw her own conclusions about events, which no one was ever nearby to confirm or deny. Often, Eleanor would imagine three or four different scenarios which could have led to the three-foot bloodstain under the welcome mat. Each of these scenarios was more brutal than the last, because that was how people worked as a general rule. They were just that; brutal.

This was part of the taint that she carried home, the thoughts which consumed her. Thoughts that often led to nightmares of faceless shadows butchering one another, which was part of the taint, too. You weren't supposed to gaze into the darkness. It wasn't her job to think, or to feel, or to interpret, only to clean. She was never to take anything from a scene, even residual thoughts of it. Cleaning is only cleaning, after all.

But Eleanor knew that her colleagues saw the same things behind closed eyelids. It was simply that none of them talked about it.

Most nights, however, there was a bit more energy, and her coworkers would gossip and joke and could easily disregard where they were, what they were doing. She would join in on the conversations, make a jab at the new guy Andy about how damned queasy he was. She'd listen to boss Robbie's nightly safety speech, which they'd all heard a thousand times. It was completely unnecessary, because this crew had been at it for a long time save for Andy. Robbie only did it because then Heather would do her own rendition in a mocking voice that had a weird little lilt to it. Eleanor would bring Fisher heart-bursting energy drinks and make a point of elbowing him frequently throughout the night, because the guy didn't look like he slept _ever._ She figured that he had the nightmares too.

It wasn't all darkness in the dark, and if asked Eleanor would not hesitate to call her colleagues friends.

Tonight's ordeal, from what she could gather, came from a home invasion. When the crew had arrived for the job, the body (or, judging by the sheer volume of blood present, _bodies_) had already been taken away. As usual, none of the cleaners had been given details, and nobody asked questions. They geared up in their protective suits, gloves, and filtration masks, and entered what was actually a rather routine layout.

The first thing that became apparent was that someone had bled profusely from a stab wound. A thick trail of the fluid led from the kitchen to the stairs, where it ended in a wide, crimson stain seeping into the carpet. Further investigating revealed similar stains in two of the bedrooms upstairs. Too much blood for it to have been a gunman, Robbie had said, and they must have hit somewhere non-vital at first. If it had been a simple bullet to the chest, the victims' lungs would have sucked the blood in. With that single, oh so lovely imaged planted in their heads, the crew set about to their arduous task.

For a while they worked without interruption. Every light in the house was turned on, but it was not just an indication of their presence. The light served to chase away some of the paranoia that was an inherent part of every job. The only sounds were those of spray bottles and scrubbing tools. Most of the crewmen were working upstairs in one of the bedrooms where the worst of the carnage awaited, while Heather and Eleanor began work in the kitchen as it was the spot they'd finish quickest. All was silent but for the noise of cleaning, until precisely two hours into the task, three loud knocks sounded on the door.

Eleanor's gaze immediately snapped up to meet Heather's over their protective goggles, neither of them keen on being the one to answer.

Occasionally on nights like this, a vagrant or drunk would wander into the scene, then see exactly _what_ they had wandered into and scramble out, probably thinking they'd come across a murder in progress. These interludes were always quick and painless, but when the quiet was disrupted by unwelcome night-walkers, it was _always_ jarring. No one was supposed to be awake at this hour. And so Eleanor's mind leaped automatically to the worst possible scenario, that someone with less than kind intentions was waiting. Maybe one of the guys upstairs could answer the door, to take away the sudden chill she was feeling.

"You gonna get that, Ellie?" Heather asked with what the other woman was sure was a smug grin behind her ventilator mask.

"I guess," Ellie replied, and set down her cleaning tools to remove her headgear. The trek to the front door, short as it was, still made her feel nervous.

When she opened it, the door revealed a haggard face framed by unruly dark curls, the eyes looking worn and somewhat detached behind thick-rimmed glasses. Well, at least he didn't _look_ like a psycho. Then again, it was rare for someone to outright appear that way. But he didn't look drugged, drunk, or deranged either, and that made Eleanor relax a little. No, he wasn't dangerous. There was something about him that reminded her of the sleepless Fisher, and an even larger something that brought to mind the image of a scruffy, wayward puppy.

"Uh, are you lost or something?" she asked of him.

Her voice seemed almost to startle the man. He glanced up at her sharply, as if he had forgotten where he was, meeting her eyes briefly before snapping his gaze away. She wondered if her gear had taken him off-guard, as it tended to do to others. But that was shy she'd removed her head coverings. She repeated herself out of courtesy, and because she was fairly certain that he'd forgotten she'd spoken.

"I said, are you lost?"

The man caught himself before he could nod, wetting his lips before he answered. Eleanor continued to speak, however.

"Listen, if it's about the lights, I'm sorry. But everyone for half a block knows what happened today, and we're trying to take care of that. We're cleaning, that is. So if you're looking to use the bathroom or...whatever you're here for, I'm afraid you can't really come in here."

The man seemed to come alive then and fumbled for words for a moment, before he withdrew something from his pocket and handed it to her. Eleanor noticed the way that he quickly withdrew his hand away from hers, but said nothing.

"My name is Will Graham. I'm...a temporary special investigator working with the FBI."

Had Will been looking, he would have seen the supreme doubt that settled on the woman's face, particularly at the word "temporary." But as quickly as the look came, it was gone again. Eleanor set about the task of mental debate as she stared down at the identification badge he'd handed to her.

Well, it was all legit...or at least it appeared so. He could still be lying, merely impersonating an agent in order to gain entry to the crime scene for some reason. It wasn't a completely unheard of occurrence, though she hadn't heard of such a happening in a long time.

On the other hand, this guy looked beyond run-down, an effect most likely caused by extreme stress. Being an FBI agent, dealing with long hours conquerable to her own and dealing with all of that death every day...it very well could cause that level of stress. And to think of how stressed she herself felt without ever even seeing the bodies...

Again, she looked to the man, and again the image of a scruffy puppy stuck out.

"FBI huh? I guess you really _can_ come in, then."

And for reasons that Will would not fully understand until later, he stepped across the threshold.


	2. Somnambulism

**Chapter Two: Somnambulism **

Eleanor watched Will out of the corner of her eye as the man entered the foyer. He removed his glasses and tucked them into his jacket's pocket, but said nothing. This made her begin to second-guess her decision to let him in. In fact, as his eyes scanned the decimated path from the kitchen to the stairs, she saw an intensity that instantly banished the "lost puppy" image she'd had. There was something in his unblinking stare which he refused to direct at her that seemed calculating...almost predatory. It was enough for her to consider taking up one of the putty knives from the kitchen's toolkit. Normally, they served to scrape dried biological matter from surfaces, but she supposed it could serve as a weapon if it came to that.

Oblivious to the woman's worries, Will felt his mind begin whirring furiously when presented with the carnage before him. He followed the path into the kitchen, still ignoring the cleaning lady beside him. There, he saw Heather, still scrubbing blood from the floor with a caustic, hospital-grade cleaner. This would serve as only a temporary distraction for him. Immediately, Heather glanced up at him, then to Eleanor, her eyes full of questions.

"Who's he?" she asked.

"Law enforcement...of sorts," said Eleanor.

"Of sorts?"

Eleanor just shrugged, not feeling up to explaining herself at that moment. "Better to just let him do his thing."

Heather stared at Will for a moment longer before she too shrugged, but the first woman knew she'd be demanding an actual answer later.

Will took a deep breath through his nose and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he could see the invasion play out.

**_'There is no blood spilled in the entryway. There never will be. The family did not see me slip in while they carried in the groceries, even in broad daylight. They didn't see me, even when they set cans on the shelves inches from my hiding place.'_**

Will saw the intruder, or rather, saw himself as the intruder, entering the house in the middle of the day and concealing himself within the tall, deep pantry closet adjacent to the kitchen. It was the most obvious hiding spot in the world, the most cliché of cliched situations, and yet none of them noticed. No one looked, even when he was close enough to breathe into their faces. For hours he stood in plain sight, and not a single member of the family had enough survival instinct to sense that anything was wrong. It was only later, once the sun had sunk below the horizon, that his presence was finally noted...and only because he willed it to be so.

As soon as the family's patriarch entered the kitchen, the intruder shifted from his hiding place. But he did not strike, not yet. He watched for a few minutes as the man set about to the task of preparing dinner for his family. An interesting role reversal...one that suited his purposes perfectly. He burst from the pantry, lunged for the very knife that his victim had used to to prepare the meal, and plunged it into the man's abdomen when he spun in shock.

**_'I let him run, giving him a head start as his blood pours out onto the floor. The wound is deep, but not fatal. I can hear him shouting as he stumbles up the stairs, telling his family to run. I catch up to him as he attempts to block me from reaching his wife. I stab him again. And again. And again. These cuts are arterial and fatal. He is silent with shock...as is his son standing in the hallway. The family will see the stains he made every second until their own are created. I revel in this. This is my—'_**

"Sorry to interrupt whatever this is, but can I get you to take a step to the left?"

Instantly, Will's mental picture shattered, and he was no longer the killer. He was again Will Graham, standing in the middle of a crime scene with an unknown woman next to him. Disoriented at first, he then began to feel agitated at the interruption.

"What?"

"We need to get this finished. There're similar stains in two of the rooms upstairs. Shouldn't you take a look at those to get a better idea of—"

"Sorry, do you mind _not _talking?" Will interrupted.

Eleanor felt her face heat up in surprise and anger, and Heather, who had until then been diligently scrubbing the remnants of the stain near the stove, ceased in her movements to stare.

"_Excuse_ me? I know you're FBI and all, but you can't just..."

"I can't focus when you're talking," Will offered as explanation.

The cleaning lady had many retorts ready to shoot back, a thousand insults she'd love to fire at the man, but she chose to bite her tongue. There was too much work to do, and she didn't want to still be in this house when the sun was coming up.

"FBI you say?" Heather was not so reluctant to make her opinion known. "And an asshole, apparently."

She made sure to punctuate her pronunciation of the word "asshole."

Eleanor shook her head ferociously and waved her gloved hands around in a gesture that she hoped would cut the other woman off. Heather got the message, thankfully.

"Right. Well, I'll just go...upstairs. Where there's _more_ blood and evidence."

The woman moved past Ellie, but not before leaning close to her and delivering a whisper-bark into her ear.

"I don't play the scene with creeps. FBI or not, he does anything funny, you just call."

"Don't worry. He gets too ornery, I'll putty knife the shit out of him," Eleanor smiled a particularly condescending sort of smile before putting her headgear back into place. "Go on, I'll finish up down here."

Confrontation successfully averted, Eleanor took up Heather's abandoned tools and turned towards Will. Admittedly, she was curious as to what his reaction to her coworker's hostility would be. He still said nothing, however, merely staring at a spot next to her face.

"Right then," Eleanor said as she flipped the scrub brush around. "Back to work."

Will seemed to become aware of the awkwardness of the scenario, how in investigating a probably intrusion, he himself became the intruder.

"Sorry," he offered. "I don't usually do this after-hours. At least not alone."

The cleaner shrugged him off.

"We don't usually get uh, visitors, let alone law enforcement, so I guess we're all a bit shaken up. No worries."

Silence followed her words. Quite an awkward silence, at that.

"Ahem. I should get back to it."

Will nodded and returned to the mental play-by-play. At least. He attempted to, but he soon found that the gentle, steady noise of Eleanor's scrubbing was distracting. He gave up on attempting to replay the murder for just a moment, instead watching this stranger work diligently to remove the splashed carnage. It was almost hypnotic to watch, the steady back and forth motion of her arm bringing to mind a pendulum. With each pass of the scrubbing brush, the tile beneath became as pristine and polished as it had been before the attack. Only the slightest tinge of rust-red tainted the water that pooled on the grout, and that too was soon cleared away by a strong bleach and disposable towels.

This woman was quite efficient, finishing the task within a few minutes before making another pass over the tile with a coarser brush and a cleaner that made the back of Will's throat itch. Once all the tools had been cleared away, Eleanor carefully ran a finger along the lines of the grout.

"What are you doing?" Will asked.

"If this was just cheap linoleum, blood and fluids could seep through a broken seam and soak into the floorboards. Of course, that would mean more work for us. But this stuff's the real deal. The homeowner probably installed it himself, but there's not a single gap anything could've gotten through," the woman explained. Then, because she couldn't resist, she reflected his question. "What are _you_ doing?"

Will took a step back and surveyed the now clean kitchen. The crew had been thorough, and not even a single drop of blood had been missed. He tried to see the scene as before. The lurid splashes were still fresh in his mind, but beyond that he saw nothing. He must be more exhausted than he thought. He sighed and rubbed at his eyes with one hand.

"I was...attempting to mentally reconstruct the scene as it played out. Apparently I'm rustier than I thought, because I feel like I'm missing something."

"There's still upstairs," Eleanor said. " But I can see what you mean. The only carnage was visceral, not collateral. It doesn't look like anything was taken or even knocked over. But then, I guess the cops could have put it all back. Hm, sorry. I shouldn't really think about it. Not my job, after all."

But Will was actually listening to her. Addled as he was, perhaps a fresh set of eyes could find the piece he was missing from staring at the puzzle for too long.

"How much do you know about what happened here?" he asked.

Eleanor hesitated to answer, using the organization of her tools as a way to buy time as she debated the logistics of speaking. Didn't he know that she was officially a phantom when it came to such things?

"Not much," she said at last. "Only that this was a home invasion in the evening. I mean, I have my guesses about what happened, but they're just guesses. We aren't really given details. I'm sure you need more to go on than just conjecture."

"Yes, well, my mind can't quite hone in on the missing piece. Go on, fire away."

"You're serious?" Eleanor fixed him with a critical eye. "You realize I'm at the bottom of the totem pole when it comes to stuff like this? You'd be better off talking to my boss upstairs."

"I'm not asking your boss," Will said. "I'm asking you. Even the bottom of the totem pole has eyes and ears. What do you see?"

Eleanor was at a loss. No one ever paid mind to her or her colleagues' work, and now that someone finally was, she found that the behavior of "speak no evil" was deeply engraved into her. It was strange to be asked such a question, and the way he'd asked it felt almost like a teacher probing a class of clueless pupils.

"I..." Suddenly something clicked, and she realized that she'd heard his name before.

"Will Graham?" She spoke slowly, softly, more to herself than to him. "You can only be _that_ Will Graham, then."

Now it was Will's turn to feel at a loss. How could she know about him? Sure, his class at the academy had heard about him catching Garret Jacob Hobbs, meeting him upon his return from the case with what he felt was extremely misplaced applause. But then, he supposed that it was quite possible that the case had been on the news, if only for its sheer brutality.

"I knew I'd heard your name before. I read an article online that mentioned you," Eleanor said aloud. "Well, it was an article linked to another article, and honestly it sounded like a bunch of resentful bullshit, but yeah, I recognize your name."

Will had a sickening feeling that he knew exactly what "resentful bullshit" she was talking about, but he asked anyway.

"Let me guess...Tattlecrime?"

"Yeah, that's it. Like I said, it was linked from another article and it didn't exactly sound like it was coming from a credible source. Let's face it, Freddie Lounds sounds like someone who writes for _The Onion_."

Will let out a short, harsh laugh.

"Then you know all about her opinions of my mental state," he said.

"Sure, but that's all just tabloid bullshit. It's all about shock factor; word a story a certain way to stir up the idle masses. Besides, I don't know you, so what judgment can I possible make? Whether her nasty opinions of you are true or not, you sure as hell do a lot more for people than some tabloid journalist ever will."

"Not fond of tabloid journalists?" Will spat the words as if they were a bitter taste in his mouth.

"Definitely not. They're like gnats. Try to swat them away and they come buzzing back. We had one try coming into a scene once after a shotgun suicide. He wanted pictures of the victim's room for his article. I mean, who the hell is so lacking in basic human empathy that they'd _want_ to do that? I swear, they're all parasites, and if someone like Freddie Lounds ever tries to enter one of my job sites, I"m sure as hell going to—"

"Putty knife her?"

"You uh, heard that, huh?" the cleaner let out a bark of laughter. "Sorry. You should know I wasn't _actually_ going to do that."

"No?" Will smirked at her reaction to being caught.

"Nah," she said. "In times of crisis, I much prefer sporking someone instead. Plus, it flows better off the tongue, don't you think?"

"Yes," Will agreed quite seriously. "In times of crises, I highly recommend sporking someone."

The woman laughed in earnest that time, the sound somewhat distorted through the ventilator mask.

"I'll keep that in mind," she said. "Quality advice there."

Will felt that he could relax somewhat around this woman. She didn't have trouble making conversation with him, which was an accomplishment in and of itself. He appreciated her attempts to lighten up the conversation without being too off-base. Most of all, her disdain for tabloid blogging was something he could definitely get behind.

"So that thing where you get into the killer's head...that's what you were doing?"

"It's what I was trying to do, yes."

"So, what was he thinking?" the cleaner was genuinely curious. "What did you see?"

At this, Will did smile, a sardonic twitch of the lips that would usually be accompanied by a shake of the head.

"I asked you first," he pointed out.

"Hm? Oh, yeah. You did. Well I...asked you second?"

She had forgotten all about it once she'd connected his name to his occupation. She playfully put her hands up in defense when Will shook his head at her.

"Well, my guesses probably aren't even half as good as a guy who can put himself in the same mindset as a killer, but I can give you my two cents, I guess."

But she never would get a chance to express her thoughts, because there came a sharp, feminine shout so sudden that both the cleaner and the former homicide detective flinched.

"Ellie, we could use a hand up here!"

"...hate it when she does that," the woman muttered as she moved to pick up her toolkit.

"Now you know how I felt when you interrupted me earlier," Will responded. "You'd be Ellie then?"

"I'd be Ellie then. Or Eleanor, if you really prefer that. Last name Rook, and that was way too formal of an introduction," the woman stuck out a hand for him to shake which, upon remembering that it was clad in a blood-crusted glove, she quickly withdrew. "Anyway, I'd better get up there. If you're coming with, there's some safety gear by the couches out there."

Will gave her a quick nod in thanks and immediately set to locating the gear while Ellie took the stairs two at a time, deftly avoiding the bulk of the bloodstains. As Will donned the disposable body suit, he reviewed what he knew about this killing.

It had been quick, but exceptionally graphic, which meant that the murderer had no interest in torturing his victims. Rather, the deliberate destruction of life but careful avoidance of property damage (other than the bloodstains) spoke of some specific purpose. The death was just a byproduct of the main intent, destruction that had to happen along the way. That too was deliberate and done a specific way. But what method was there to the madness? What greater purpose was there?

An answer prickled in the back of his mind, on the tip of his tongue. Will felt like he knew the purpose, but he couldn't put it to words. Explaining it would be difficult. He was curious about what Ellie's opinion had been, but she was upstairs now. Whatever her colleague had called to her for had become her new focus. The odds were that her new task would likely overload her, pushing her first impression thoughts to some far-off storage bank in her mind.

But then, did it matter at all in the end?

He wasn't supposed to even be here, let alone try to discover what had happened. And the cleaners weren't qualified law enforcement who had the training to recognize patterns and distinctions. Whatever thoughts they had about the crime couldn't be considered anything more than opinions.

Even so, he was grasping, unable to find that final thread which would connect the pieces together. Now that he had decided to think about the case, it would plague him until he found its resolution. Without a fresh vantage point, he may not be able to do so.

Quickly, Will finished pulling on the gear and hurried to follow Ellie's path. It took only a moment to find the room which the cleaners occupied, led by a long power cord running from the bathroom and through the hallway. He could see the woman standing in the center of the room, back towards him, and four other people dressed in the same safety gear. Her hands were spread wide at her sides, as if unable to process the scene which she was slowly turning to take in. and as he paused by the doorway, smeared with a single bloody hand print, he could fully understand her apparent disbelief.

The carnage was even more extensive than that in the kitchen. Hardly an inch of the carpet had been spared, save for a few inches near the closet and the space under the bed. Brown-red liquid caked into the fibers which were once a pale blue, heavy smears in straight lines indicating that someone had wiped their feet at they walked. The walls, too, were smeared with thick streaks, as if someone had shoved the victim against it.

Blood was not the only medium of decoration the room had received, however. Near the biggest smear on the wall, in slanted, fat letters was printed the word "serenade," etched in permanent marker. The largest source of gore in the room came from the bed, where a messy, congealed mass of slowly drying blood sat. It didn't take an empathetic or overactive imagination to guess at how the victim had died...or had old the victim had been. The decorations, posters, and personal effects all told that story. They'd been young, but not so young that they hadn't understood what was happening. Not a child, but not an adult. It mattered little to the killer at any rate, for he had butchered them regardless. Ellie dreaded whatever scene awaited in the other bedroom. Yet, despite her sickening sensations about it, she still felt like she had to see it sooner rather than later.

"Is the other room like this?" she asked quietly. "Is it this bad?"

"We took care of the bulk of it already," Fisher supplied. "We have to wait for the wall treatment to dry before we can finish. But...yeah. It was bad. I'm glad you didn't have to go in there."

"That's just it, I still want to see it. Even if it's clean now."

"Why? Trust me, it's a better use of your time to help us out in here. You don't need to think about how it was. You'll have nightmares about it."

"Good thing I already have nightmares about other things, then," Ellie retorted. "Besides, I want to get a better idea of how much work we have left."

She'd lied, of course. She wasn't thinking about the time line or the content of whatever nightmares she'd be having in the future. There was simply a curiosity there, a little itch relating to the letters on the wall.

"Alright," another worker, her boss said. "But make it quick. This is gonna take a while and we need all the hands we have."

"Got it," Ellie nodded and turned towards the door, noticing Will's presence at last. "Oh, so you decided to join us."

"Oh, the asshole's still here, huh?" Heather noticed Will too. "Here I thought you'd gotten fed up and putty-knifed him."

"He's FBI," Ellie stated simply, cutting off the others before they could even voice the questions they were no doubt thinking. "I think stabbing an FBI agent is pretty much an automatic black mark on your record no matter what the excuse. Besides, he's only a temporary special consultant. That would look even worse."

"Oh yeah, t_hat _doesn't sound made up at all," Fisher practically spewed sarcasm. "No law enforcement ever shows up while we're on the scene. Emphasis on the 'never.' How do you think this looks?"

Will was tired of these people referring to him like he wasn't even there. Feeling the beginnings of a headache, he gently massaged his temples for a moment.

"Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I'm not technically law enforcement?"

"No," Fisher said. "That sounds like you know how unbelievable your claim is and you just don't give a shit. Just who are you, anyway?"

"He's not some machete-wielding psychopath, Fisher. He's working with the FBI. He showed me his identification, and even if it sounds made up, I'm sure there's some bigwig we could call to vouch for him. But anyone who pays attention to the news knows who he is."

"And just who is he?"

"Will Graham," she answered succinctly, and Fisher froze.

"_That_ Will Graham?" he spoke softly, excitedly, like a child who'd seen a glimpse of his favorite superhero.

"Yes, and it would be fantastic if people would stop talking over me," Will butted in, his exasperation building by the second.

"Sorry, man," Fisher muttered, giving up his fight as easily as that.

Another confrontation avoided, Ellie let her hands fall to hang limply at her sides. But the hostile tone of her coworker rung in her ears like the echo of a broken bell. She could practically feel the stare of her boss on the back of her head, knowing that while he'd been silent so far, he had a slew of questions waiting for her, not the least of which was _"why did you let him in?"_

She wondered why herself.

"So, did you solve the puzzle yet?" she asked Will.

Their questions could wait until later. She certainly wouldn't regard them until such a time. Ellie could taste the tension (and the haze of caustic chemical cleaner) in the air behind her as her coworkers stared accusingly at the back of her head. Well, her head covering wasn't going to crinkle into a pattern suggesting answers, and Ellie stood stalwart. If Will noted the tension at all, he gave no indication. He did fidget slightly, however. Ellie had caught his gaze for a few seconds, a hint of amusement in her deep brown eyes. Uncomfortable, he shook his head, both to break the unwanted eye contact and to answer the question.

"It seems there aren't enough pieces to solve it just yet."

"Well, I'm about to check on the uh...status of the other room. Maybe you'll find some fragmented pieces in there."

Ellie led Will down the hall, away from the fresh carnage and into the other ruined bedroom. This one was far cleaner, almost raw in its sterility. The carpets were all torn out, exposing the floorboards beneath which were damp from the enzymatic cleaner the crew had sprayed there. A similar spray coated the walls, which had been scrubbed clean save for a single line of graffiti in permanent marker, as in the other room. The marker ran slightly, an effect of the cleaner. A couple of large, red containers clearly marked "bio-hazard" sat against the wall, waiting to be hauled downstairs. Everything was gone; all the personal effects, the bed, the curtains, pictures and furnishings and everything that had made the room a home.

"Wow, they did a great job in here," Ellie remarked, surveying the scene. "I don't know how many puzzle pieces you might find with it like this."

She was right. Without any evidence, without any blood, there was no picture to construct. It was perfectly clean, perfectly whitewashed save the single written word.

"How are they only 'mostly' done?" he asked, leaning closer to the letters. _Aubade_, they spelled, a word the opposite of a serenade.

"The cleaner needs time to work. Once it's dry and the fumes have aired out, we have to seal the floorboards against odor. A scene like this, blood would have soaked through the carpet. We usually use epoxy to seal things up. Usually we'd leave it for a couple of hours. But you know it...looked like the crime scene was pretty fresh, which is weird. We're never allowed to start cleanup until the crime's been solved. So, whoever did this must've been caught red-handed..." she trailed off in her explanation, but Will was still aptly listening.

It had been a long time since he'd heard information which was unfamiliar to him, even if it was simple information. The gore and the destruction were shocking to people unfamiliar with death, the fuel for nausea and disturbed lines of thought. This woman didn't seem nauseated by it, and Will wondered how long she'd been doing it, what things she'd seen, what memories burned into her eyelids.

"This seems like it was an easy job," Will remarked.

"It was, this time around. Time consuming, but easy enough in principle. Another crew will come in tomorrow to haul everything away, double-check our work, and take all the gear back to headquarters. But they aren't all this easy."

Will heard it then, in the downturn of her voice. The job _did_ nauseate her, but it wasn't the job's viscera, it was the aftermath, the haunting thoughts that came long after the work was done.

The same as him.

"Anyway," the woman was saying. "I do need to help the others, and I'm sure I'll get an earful, so I have to ask; why did you come here? I believe that you are who you say you are, but why would someone like you come to a routine cleanup like this? The crime's over. As far as I know they caught the guy who did it. So unless there's been a major screw-up leading to a need for more investigation, there's really no need for you to watch us scrub walls."

"Maybe there is a need," Will said. "It's...cleansing, no pun intended."

"It is," Ellie agreed. "Returning things to the way they were meant to be is pretty...purifying. Still, though, why would anyone come here if they don't have to?"

Will considered his answer, what had drawn him into the house in the first place. For the first time, Will made eye contact with her on purpose, and felt almost as if he were gazing into a mirror. Her eyes were red, the skin around them puffy and dark much like his own. But they were alert, her eyes. The pupils were shrunken against the fluorescent light, but at the same time seemed eager to swallow that light, and she did not blink as he stared at her.

"I couldn't sleep," he said at last.


End file.
